| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | XI. “Absence from thee is something worse than death” | | By George Henry Boker (1823–1890) |
| | | ABSENCE from thee is something worse than death; | |
| For to the heart that slumbers in the shroud, | |
| What are the mourners’ tears and clamors loud, | |
| The open grave, the dismal cypress wreath? | |
| The quiet body misses not its breath; | 5 |
| The pain that shivers through the weeping crowd | |
| Is idle homage to the visage proud | |
| That changeth not for all Affliction saith. | |
| But to be thus, from thee so far away, | |
| Is as though I, in seeming death, might be | 10 |
| Conscious of all that passed about my clay; | |
| As though I saw my doleful obsequy, | |
| Mourned my own loss, rebelled against decay, | |
| And felt thy tear-drops trickling over me. | | | | |
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